The field of the present invention relates to spatially selective material processing using a laser. In particular, apparatus and methods are shown and described in which a laser system is employed to spatially selectively remove a metal coating from a polymer substrate without damaging the polymer substrate and without leaving resolidified molten metal residue on the substrate.
A wide variety of spatially selective material processing techniques have been developed, using lasers, applied to metal, applied to polymers, or applied to other materials. Selected examples include:    U.S. Pat. No. 3,720,784 entitled “Recording and display method and apparatus” issued Mar. 13, 1973 to Maydan et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 4,000,492 entitled “Metal film recording media for laser writing” issued Dec. 28, 1976 to Willens;    U.S. Pat. No. 4,752,455 entitled “Pulsed laser microfabrication” issued Jun. 21, 1988 to Mayer;    U.S. Pat. No. 5,093,279 entitled “Laser ablation damascene process” issued Mar. 3, 1992 to Andreshak et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 5,104,480 entitled “Direct patterning of metals over a thermally inefficient surface using a laser” issued Apr. 14, 1992 to Wojnarowski et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 5,569,398 entitled “Laser system and method for selectively trimming films” issued Oct. 29, 1996 to Sun et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 6,036,809 entitled “Process for releasing a thin-film structure from a substrate” issued Mar. 14, 2000 to Kelly et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 6,183,588 entitled “Process for transferring a thin-film structure to a substrate” issued Feb. 6, 2001 to Kelly et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 6,531,679 entitled “Method for the laser machining of organic materials” issued Mar. 11, 2003 to Heerman et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 6,833,222 entitled “Method and apparatus for trimming a pellicle film using a laser” issued Dec. 21, 2004 to Buzerak et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 6,949,215 entitled “Method for processing a three-dimensional structure by laser” issued Sep. 27, 2005 to Yamada et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 7,106,507 entitled “Flexible wire grid polarizer and fabricating method thereof” issued Sep. 12, 2006 to Lee et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 7,176,053 entitled “Laser ablation method for fabricating high performance organic devices” issued Feb. 13, 2007 to Dimmler;    U.S. Pat. No. 7,220,371 entitled “Wire grid polarizer and method for producing same” issued May 22, 2007 to Suganuma;    U.S. Pat. No. 7,332,263 entitled “Method for patterning an organic light emitting diode device” issued Feb. 19, 2008 to Addington et al;    U.S. Pat. No. 7,692,860 entitled “Wire grid polarizer and method of manufacturing the same” issued Apr. 6, 2010 to Sato et al;    E. Hunger, H. Pietsch, S. Petzoldt and E. Matthias; “Multishot ablation of polymer and metal films at 248 nm”; Applied Surface Science, Vol. 54, pp. 227-231 (1992);    Matthias Bolle and Sylvain Lazare; “Ablation of thin polymer films on Si or metal substrate with the low intensity UV beam of an excimer laser or mercury lamp: advantages of ellipsometric rate measurements”; Applied Surface Science, Vol. 54, pp. 471-476, (1992);    J. Krüger and W. Kautek; “Femtosecond-pulse laser processing of metallic and semiconducting thin films”; Laser-Induced Thin Film Processing, J. J. Dubowski, ed; Proc. SPIE Vol. 2403, p. 436 (1995);    P. Simon and J. Ihlemann; “Machining of submicron structures on metals and semiconductors by ultrashort UV-laser pulses”; Applied Physics A, Vol. 63, p. 505 (1996);    S. Nolte, C. Momma, H. Jacobs, A. Tünnermann, B. N. Chichkov, B. Wellegehausen, and H. Welling; “Ablation of metals by ultrashort laser pulses”; Journal of the Optical Society of America B, Vol. 14, No. 10, pp. 2716-2722 (October 1997);    Itsunari Yamada, Kenji Kintaka, Junji Nishii, Satoshi Akioka, Yutaka Yamagishi, and Mitsunori Saito; “Mid-infrared wire-grid polarizer with silicides”; Optics Letters, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 258-260 (10 Sep. 2008);    Itsunari Yamada, Junji Nishii, and Mitsunori Saito; “Modeling, fabrication, and characterization of tungsten silicide wire-grid polarizer in infrared region”; Applied Optics, Vol. 47, No. 26, pp. 4735-4738 (2008);    Andrew C. Strikwerda, Kebin Fan, Hu Tao, Daniel V. Pilon, Xin Zhang, and Richard D. Averitt; “Comparison of birefringent electric split-ring resonator and meanderline structures as quarter-wave plates at terahertz frequencies”; Optics Express, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 136-149 (5 Jan. 2009); and    Yong Ma, A. Khalid, Timothy D. Drysdale, and David R. S. Cumming; “Direct fabrication of terahertz optical devices on low-absorption polymer substrates”; Optics Letters, Vol. 34, No. 10, pp. 1555-1557 (15 May 2009).
Maydan (U.S. Pat. No. 3,720,784) discloses use of pulsed output of a visible laser to form holes of varying sizes in a thin bismuth film on a transparent polyester film. Each hole is formed by a single pulse (3-20 nJ, 20-30 ns, 5-10 μm beam size), which heats the bismuth film to beyond its melting point (272° C.) over an area that is approximately proportional to the pulse energy, and surface tension draws the molten metal toward the periphery of the newly formed hole. The molten material resolidifies, leaving a crater-like rim around the hole. The size of each hole is determined by the area that was melted, hence by the energy delivered by the corresponding laser pulse.
Each of Dimmler (U.S. Pat. No. 7,176,053) and Addington (U.S. Pat. No. 7,332,263) discloses processing organic transistors or LEDs using UV lasers, in which all layers of a structure (e.g., metal, organic, and oxide) absorb the laser radiation and are melted.